So snopes is an acceptable source?
From Snopes:
“Claim: Zimmerman’s knowledge about a potential circumstance in which a vaccine could theoretically affect ASD was hidden from the public until he came forward in 2018: FALSE
In her report, Attkisson states that “Dr. Zimmerman … privately told government lawyers that vaccines can, and did cause autism in some children. That turnabout … stood to change everything about the vaccine-autism debate. If the public were to find out.” In point of fact, the theory that vaccination could potentially be a stressor leading to autism in children with a specific form of mitochondrial dysfunction was explicitly stated in Zimmerman’s 2006 case report. That topic has been studied in the public forum for over a decade now. The existence of an alleged mitochondrial disorder-autism link, which remains murky to this day, is not news now, and it would not have been news during the time the omnibus cases were deliberated.
Additionally, following the omnibus cases, Zimmerman has served as an expert witness in autism cases for petitioners to the vaccine court in cases in which his mitochondrial dysfunction mechanism has been argued, and his statements are easily found in filings made public by the federal government. In a case heard by the vaccine court in 2012, for example, the petitioners argued that a pre-existing mitochondrial dysfunction caused their child to develop autism symptoms after vaccination. They used Dr. Zimmerman, who had treated the patient years later, as one of their expert witnesses, and his testimony is described in detail in the court filing. In that case, the special master characterized Zimmerman’s views as anecdotal in rejecting the petitioner’s claim:”
Whether vaccination can [can cause decompensation or regression in children with inborn errors of metabolism], even in these most vulnerable children, has not been established… The most glaring problem, however, is that no evidence adduced in this case, other than the anecdotally based opinions of Dr. Zimmerman, demonstrates that the decompensation or regression induced by illness in children with metabolic or mitochondrial disorders looks like, mimics, or actually results in ASD.
These views have been in the public record for years. The only reason Zimmerman’s testimony is in the news again is that he was compelled to write an affidavit about the 2007 incident by someone with a desire to re-introduce an old controversy back into the news cycle.
The Bottom Line
Zimmerman, a scientist with serious credentials who was once a government expert on vaccines, believes that narrow circumstances might exist in which the combination of pre-existing mitochondrial dysfunction and vaccination could trigger ASD. This view is not held by many scientists, and from a scientific-evidence standpoint it remains speculative. The 2018 deposition given by Zimmerman regarding the 2007 sequence of events during omnibus proceedings was compelled by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an anti-vaccine activist with a dubious commitment to scientific accuracy, and Rolf Hazlehurst, a litigant in one of the omnibus cases.
Finally, it bears mentioning that Dr. Zimmerman supports vaccination. “As a pediatric neurologist and member of the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Neurology Society, the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association, I strongly support the importance of vaccines for all children,” he wrote in his statement: